The White House today honored four MIT affiliates with its highest awards for American scientists and innovators. In a ceremony this afternoon, President Joe Biden announced this year’s recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the National Medal of Science.
James Fujimoto ’79, SM ’81, PhD ’84, Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Principal Investigator of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation with Eric Swanson SM ’84, a research affiliate of RLE and M.A. Mentor at Provincial Polytechnic’s Deshpande Center for Technology Innovation, and David Huang ’85, SM ’89, PhD ’93, professor of ophthalmology at Oregon Health and Science University.
Subra Suresh ScD ’81, Vannevar Bush Professor Emeritus and former dean of the MIT School of Engineering, has been awarded the National Medal of Science.
“If we put our mind to it, anything is possible, and you all have incredible minds,” President Biden said of the honorees. “You have saved people’s lives, you have changed the way we see the world, you have Make the world a better place. I don’t know what more we can ask for.”
Fujimoto, Swanson and Huang received the award for their invention of optical coherence tomography (OCT), a technology that uses reflected light to non-invasively generate high-resolution images of sensitive tissues such as the eye. They introduced OCT in a paper published in the journal science By 1991, the technology had become the standard of ophthalmic care, used to diagnose and treat many conditions, including macular degeneration, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy.
Earlier this year, the trio also received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for this impactful work.
“The invention of optical coherence tomography represents one of the greatest engineering breakthroughs at MIT in the past several decades. The research by Professor Fujimoto, Dr. David Huang, and Eric Swanson has had a truly extraordinary impact on countless patients around the world and exemplifies the MIT is committed to its mission of benefiting humanity,” said Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of MIT’s School of Engineering and Engineering. Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
The National Medal of Technology and Innovation was established in 1980 to recognize those who have made lasting contributions to America’s competitiveness and quality of life and have helped strengthen the nation’s skilled workforce. Nominees are selected by a distinguished independent committee representing the private and public sectors.
Fujimoto, Swanson and Huang join 30 other MIT community members in receiving the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
From laboratory to clinic
In the early 1990s, Fujimoto, an electrical engineer who joined MIT in 1985, researched biomedical applications of advanced laser technology. Carmen Puliafito, an ophthalmologist at New England Eye Center, approached his lab and asked if they could explore the use of lasers in eye surgery.
Huang, then an MD student in Fujimoto’s lab, began a project to measure the thickness of the retina using an optical technique called interferometry. They teamed up with Eric Swanson, then a satellite communications engineer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and an expert in using optics for space communications. Swanson used fiber optics and high-speed detection technology to build a prototype device that is so sensitive that it can not only accurately measure the retina but can also be used to see inside the retina and perform OCT imaging. The resulting instrument produced the first high-resolution cross-sectional images of retinal microstructure.
“Eric initially did this in his spare time. Because of his involvement, we were able to show that you can do imaging, which really requires advanced technology using satellites and optical communications,” Fujimoto said.
OCT imaging works by shining a thin beam of light onto tissue, which penetrates below its surface. Structures within the tissue reflect light back to the detector, but because structures at different depths reflect light differently, there is a time delay for the light to return to the detector.
A computer measures this time delay to build a depth profile of the structure. OCT uses multiple passes of a beam to generate a series of depth profiles that are combined into cross-sections or 3D images that can reveal objects beneath the surface of tissue.
Fujimoto said the biggest challenge in developing OCT was determining how to capture light-speed reflections.
“Light from the moon reaches the Earth in 1.3 seconds. If you are trying to measure something at the cellular scale of biological tissue, you need extremely high temporal resolution. And the amount of light reflected back is very small, about ten times the initial intensity. 1 in 100 million. Combining these is a very difficult thing,” he added.
With Swanson’s expertise, they were able to overcome these challenges and design an instrument that could be used in a medical setting. New England Eye Center clinical scientists Carmen Puliafito and Joel Schuman led clinical studies of more than 5,000 patients with diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration and glaucoma. Eyes were imaged.
“These studies lay the foundation for future applications in ophthalmology and the commercialization of OCT. Progress can only be achieved through multidisciplinary collaboration in clinical medicine, science and engineering,” Fujimoto said.
Today, OCT is the most commonly used eye procedure, with tens of millions of scans performed internationally each year. The technique is so precise that it can be used to image structures measuring just a thousandth of a millimeter.
The future of optical coherence tomography
In addition to its applications in ophthalmology, OCT is used to image coronary plaques in the heart that can cause cardiac arrest, and has applications in cancer detection and surgical guidance, as well as basic research.
At MIT, Fujimoto and his team in the Biomedical Optical Imaging and Biophotonics Group continue to advance OCT technology for faster speeds and higher resolution. With these advances, the technology could be used to capture changes in retinal microvascular structure, which may be early markers of disease. They are also investigating other applications of OCT, including high-resolution in vivo imaging of the gastrointestinal tract for early cancer detection.
Fujimoto said dozens of research groups around the world are also working on exciting applications of OCT. One promising future direction is to use this technology to map blood vessels and non-invasively assess blood flow by observing the movement of blood cells. Other groups are using OCT in neuroscience research.
Several companies are currently working on developing OCT devices that can be used in pharmacies or community health centers to screen large numbers of patients who are not easily screened, especially those who are underserved, for undetected systemic diseases such as diabetes. Community.
“Developing impactful technologies requires long-term, sustained investment. Of course, you need creative advances, but there are a lot of advances along the way that might be considered incremental. But when you combine many of those incremental advances with the international scientific community and the When the contributions of people from different disciplines of perspective are combined, it can be transformative,” Fujimoto said.
An influential researcher and transformative educator
Suresh was awarded the National Medal of Science for his commitment to research, education, and international collaborations that advance materials science research and its applications in other disciplines and foster collaboration among people and countries.
“Dr. Suresh’s academic achievements and advancement in the field of materials science are truly remarkable. His ability to foster research collaborations across disciplines and borders has had a lasting impact on the academic community. Whether as chair of the MIT Engineering Department, As director of the National Science Foundation and as president of Carnegie Mellon University, his contributions to engineering education have been transformative,” said Chandrakasan.
The National Medal of Science was established in 1959 and is administered by the National Science Foundation for the White House. The award is awarded annually to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to science and engineering. The Presidential Appointments Committee selects nominees based on outstanding contributions to chemistry, engineering, computing, mathematics, or the biological, behavioral/social, and physical sciences.
After receiving his PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT, Suresh joined the faculty at Brown University and was promoted to full professor in 1989. He returned to MIT in 1993 as professor of materials science and engineering and was named chair of the seventh department many years later.
While serving as department chair, Suresh also served as the institute’s lead coordinator, responsible for the creation of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore. He also founded the Global Enterprise for Micromechanics and Molecular Medicine (GEM4), a program that fosters global collaboration across disciplinary boundaries centered on nanomechanics in biomedicine and environmental health.
Suresh was appointed Dean of the College of Engineering in 2007. During his tenure as dean, the college launched several new initiatives, including the Center for Computational Engineering and the MIT Flexible Engineering degree program. In 2010, he was appointed director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and later became professor emeritus.
Under his leadership, NSF established the Global Research Council, a virtual organization of heads of science and engineering funding agencies from more than 50 countries to promote global collaboration and data sharing. He also oversaw the establishment of the Center for Life Balance program, which aims to increase the number of women at doctoral level in science and engineering from 26% to 40% between 2011 and 2021.
Suresh left the National Science Foundation in 2013 to become president of Carnegie Mellon University, a position he held until 2018 when he was appointed president of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. In 2023, he returns to Brown University as a Distinguished Professor in the School of Engineering.